The Priest's Graveyard (31 page)

I was going
to kill Danny.

I was Judas, who was being paid in the silver of vengeance and justice. Danny knew it, and I knew it. In fact, I wasn’t so
sure he didn’t want me to kill him.

He had killed the guilty in the name of justice, and by doing so he had become guilty. He had killed Lamont, and now in my
mind he
was
Lamont. And although I didn’t blame Lamont for the state of my life, I could not allow another law to take his place.

I had one chance to be set free and never look back. It was either that or Danny was waiting to kill me, and I was okay with
that, too.

I stepped out on the curb in front of Saint Paul Catholic Church and walked away from the cab without looking back. But Raymond
wasn’t leaving, so I looked back and saw that he was watching me.

“You sure you’re okay?” he asked.

“Yes,” I said. Standing out there on the sidewalk I felt like a ghost who’d mistakenly walked into the real world. I was being
watched from a hundred sides. I knew because I could hear the voices clearly again for the first time since I’d been chased
down the alleyway by gunmen and saved by Lamont a year and three months ago. Only this time I was the one with the gun.

I gave him a halfhearted wave. “Thank you.”

He nodded, then pulled away, and I walked up to the front doors. Not daring to look back in case someone was staring at me,
I pressed the large thumb latch and pushed. The door opened. He’d left it open for me. Danny had always been such a gentleman.
I had to love that about him.

I stepped in and shut the door behind me. My breathing was thick and my fingers were twitching, but inside the church I was
safe from the street. Dim light glowed through the deadly quiet foyer. Someone had left a book on the floor. A hymnal.

Oddly enough, I felt more threat from the voices in my head than from Danny. My last real encounter with the voices had left
me with a fractured mind and a broken, half-dead body. Danny, on the other hand, had never shown the slightest inclination
to hurt me, not even when I was shooting at him. Yes, he did lock me in the room, but he probably could have killed me.

I didn’t hate Danny. I didn’t hate Lamont. I’m not even sure I hated Jonathan Bourque anymore. Instead, I hated that they
had made me who I was.

I hated that I had to kill Danny, but there was nothing I was more eager to do than just that. An image from that movie
Apocalypse Now
flashed through my mind. A soldier went up a river during the Vietnam War to kill an army colonel named Kurtz, who’d gone
off the deep end. Kurtz accepted his death willingly. He embraced the horror with as much boldness as he’d dished it out.

I was the soldier and Danny was Kurtz. There was an understanding between us, a nobility that most people would never get.

These lofty thoughts joined the voices whispering in my head, forming a strange, fractured soundtrack of terrible wonder.
But above it all there was a much clearer sound, a voice that said over and over,
You’re gonna kill him, Renee, You’re gonna kill, Renee, You’re gonna kill Danny, Renee.

I really was finally doing what I had been born to do. Or at least what I had become reborn to do.

I set my kit on the floor, unlatched it, pulled out my gun, and stood up.

I would kill Danny or he would kill me. Then I would gladly die because I couldn’t live anymore, not like this. I wasn’t thinking
about what I would do after I killed him. Escaping the police wasn’t on my mind. How ending Danny’s life would change me wasn’t
my concern.

I was simply doing what I had to do, because Danny deserved to die.

Maybe God would send another killer to kill me for killing Danny for killing Lamont. Maybe human nature is the ultimate assassin,
finally taking every life because we are all guilty on one level or another.

I stood in the foyer for at least a minute, maybe two or maybe even five, swimming in a whirlpool of thoughts.

My resolve was interrupted by a sudden wave of regret and sorrow. Why did it have to be Danny? I thought I loved Danny. He
was the kindest person I had ever known, other than Lamont, who turned out to be not so kind after all.

Maybe I had Danny pegged wrong, too. Or maybe I was attracted to monsters because
I
was a monster.

Or just maybe because I was meant to kill them.

I held the gun by my leg and stretched my fingers around the butt, one at a time. Then I started forward, stepping lightly
on my feet so I wouldn’t make any sound.

It was time to hear Danny’s confession.

Thump
.

Danny’s heart jerked then stalled at the sound of the book slapping wood. A chill washed down his neck.

She’d come.

He heard the door close, just barely. He imagined more, breathing perhaps, a pounding heart maybe. But these were only from
his own chest.

It was Renee and she was inside the church. Anyone else would be stomping around by now, calling out, mangling this eerie
silence.

So…It was as he’d hoped. And dreaded.

For a long time, there was no other indication of her presence, and he wondered if she’d opened the door and peered through
the crack only to close it without entering. But then the slight brush of shoes on the floor reached him, and he knew she
was coming.

He would remove the figurative splinter from Renee’s flesh. He would do it for her sake, not his own. He had to be sure she
understood this before she killed him.

What if he failed? And then, what if guilt and shame destroyed her? He couldn’t tolerate the thought that he might further
wound that precious woman. She had to accept his death to save her life, but he would not allow it until he was sure she was
absolved of all guilt.

Tears broke from both of his eyes and ran down his cheeks. What had become of him? He’d carried the burden of death and judgment
on his shoulders for so many years, and now he would finally let it go.

He was so distracted by his own emotion that the grating of the door in the next booth seemed to come too early. She was entering.

He heard the familiar creak of the seat as she sat. And then it all went quiet again.

Danny reached up, gripped the knob on the small door between the booths, and slid it open. But he did not look into the adjacent
booth. There was no rush.

She was in there, he was sure of it, but she didn’t say a word. How could she, after all she’d suffered? She was only a shell
of herself, having been emptied by his callous insistence that she know the truth.

When he couldn’t stand the silence a moment longer he spoke out. “You came.”

No response.

“Thank you.”

Still not a word. Surely, it was Renee in there.

“Do you know what I want you to do?”

The voice finally came, soft and meek. Matter-of-fact.

“Yes.”

That was all, just
yes
. But it was all he needed. Using his left foot, he nudged the gun under the partition into her booth.

“Tell me what I want you to do.”

“You want me to kill you,” Renee said.

Innocent. Distant.

“Tell me why,” Danny said.

“Because you’re no better than Lamont,” she said. “You are two sides of the same coin.”

“How is that?”

She hesitated. “I’m here to hear your confession, Father. You tell me.”

Of course, that was how he’d intended it. He could see the butt of his gun on the floor. She hadn’t picked it up.

“It’s been three months since my last confession. I’ve never really believed that confession does much except make people
feel better about themselves. It doesn’t clean up the ugliness of this world. People hurt themselves and others and then they
confess and then they hurt more people. It’s the way we humans live.”

“Yes,” she said.

“I’ve taken a more direct path to cleaning up the world. I kill the worst offenders.”

“Go on.”

“I’ve been tempted to be good, the oldest and vilest temptation in the book, and I’ve been tempted to judge. And I’m afraid
I’ve succumbed to these temptations in a monstrous fashion. I have ruined the lives of many. I have killed others.”

He could hear her breathing now, steady and heavier than a moment ago. He had to say these words, if not for her then for
himself.

“I thought I was right, living by an ethical code based on consequential moral reasoning, everything in perfect little packages.
All of us are judged, and if found guilty we pay the price.” Here it was then. “But today I learned that we are all guilty.
I as much as they.”

Why it had taken so long for this window in his mind to open, he didn’t know. But now that it was gaping, he could hardly
sit still in the light shining in on his dark soul.

“Tell me why you deserve to die,” she said.

“In the name of the greater good, I have left hundreds of children fatherless and dozens of wives grieving. I have lived by
the gun. I must die by that same gun.”

“Tell me why I should be the one to kill you,” she said.

Sweat broke from his hairline and tickled his right temple.

“Because I have given you permission. I give up my right to life to you, and you alone.”

“Tell me why.”

“Because I am judgment, and it was judgment that ruined your life. I have become the very monster that broke you. Now you
must break me.”

He could imagine nothing else now except dying by her hand. His heart was pounding and his hands were sweating, but it was
remorse that smothered him, not fear. This was the right end to it all. This was justice.

“Please, Renee, I beg you.” It was all he could do to keep from blurting out in desperation. His voice trembled. “I have done
so much wrong. I have killed so many. I can’t go on like this.”

Still, she hadn’t picked up the gun.

“You have everything you need to start over with a clean slate,” he said.

For a long time nothing happened. He couldn’t think of anything else to say. He’d made his point and couldn’t think of a way
to clarify it. His life was nothing more or less than an abscessed tooth that needed to be pulled from the world’s mouth,
and she was the one he’d chosen to do the pulling.

Renee started to cry in the other booth, and his heart began to melt with pain.

I was holding
my gun in my lap, knowing that I was going to shoot Danny. It was the right thing to do, because he’d given up his right
to life and was begging me to do it. I was going to do it, because everything he said made perfect sense to me.

Danny was more than an evil man who’d killed so many other evil men. He was judgment itself—the very essence of humanity that
made people hurt each other in the first place. That’s what he was saying and I was sitting there thinking,
Yes, that’s right. That’s exactly right, Danny
.

But that didn’t stop me from feeling sorry for him when I finally lifted the gun. He couldn’t see me, of course, but I got
the gun halfway up to the window when a new truth hit me.

Danny’s my only friend.

A terrible wave of sadness swept over me and I started to cry. I lowered the gun, trying to reset my mind.

“No, Renee,” Danny said. “You must not lose your nerve. Pick up the gun.”

He was right, I knew that, and I told myself to get a grip. I sucked in tears, faced the window, pushed the long silencer
through the lattice, and slid my finger around the trigger.

He wasn’t in front of the barrel and I didn’t turn the gun back to where I thought he must be sitting. Somehow I knew that
I had gone far enough. I was offering him the barrel. It was up to him to take it.

I sat there, squared to the window, holding the gun in both hands, sobbing quietly.

She had her
own gun. His still lay on the floor. She’d come into the church with her own. This was the first thing that struck Danny
when he saw the long black barrel slide through the latticework.

She had come intending to kill him.

He wasn’t sure why this bothered him, only that it did. But then it made sense. He’d wounded her this deeply. Such an innocent
young woman had been so ravaged by judgment that her only course was to extract her own judgment. It was a vicious circle.

Judge not lest you be judged
.

She was trying not to cry, but her sobs were shaking the gun.

Danny slid off the bench, knelt on his right knee, faced the window, and held the long barrel against his mouth.

“Pull the trigger,” he said.

A single bullet to the brain would do severe damage but might not end a victim’s life immediately. A single bullet through
the back of the neck, on the other hand, would separate the brain from the rest of the body as surely as if the victim had
been beheaded.

He could see her now, facing him, tears streaming from her eyes, gun in both hands.

“Pull the trigger,” he repeated.

She sucked in some air in an attempt to control herself. Her knuckles were white on the butt of the gun.

Danny felt his own face heat with a mix of emotions he couldn’t place right away. Two thoughts crowded his mind as she stared
into his eyes.

The first was that he loved her.

The second was that he was losing his nerve.

“Pull the trigger!”

“I don’t think I can judge you, Danny!” If anyone else had been in the church they would have heard her cry. It was surreal,
she with her gun against his teeth, Danny begging her to pull the trigger.

“You can! You can do it!”

“I don’t think I can judge you.”

“You’re not!”

“What’s the opposite of judging?” she asked.

Danny froze. The reverend mother’s voice had spoken in this very confessional.

“Love?” Renee answered for him. “Isn’t it love?”

I don’t know
how it happened, but the moment I looked into Danny’s eyes I knew that I couldn’t pull that trigger.